Chasing the Dark

by Sam Hepburn

  ‘You weren’t hallucinating, Joe. If it hadn’t been for Jackson and Bailey Duval we’d all be dead.’

  ‘But … how …?’

  ‘It’s a little complicated. I have to say, the story gets longer every time Bailey tells it, but I can give you the gist.’

  Norma hanging out with Bailey? I was back in weird zone. She sat down on the bed and I gazed at her, wondering what was coming.

  ‘As soon as Jackson realised Viktor Kozek was tearing London apart looking for you and Yuri he decided to take Rikki and Bailey away from the estate to somewhere safe. He’d fetched Rikki from his girlfriend’s mother’s and was on his way back to get Bailey when Kozek and his thugs arrived and forced them up to what I understand is a penthouse flat that Jackson has converted into offices.’

  Penthouse! I bit back the urge to laugh. She thought I was coughing and gave me another drink.

  ‘When Kozek’s thugs threatened Rikki, Jackson had no choice. He told them you were in Catford and handed over his phone so that Kozek could contact you and pretend to be him. Then they kept him and Rikki under guard until Viktor had picked you and Nina up.’

  The fug was starting to lift. ‘OK, but how come Jackson and Bailey were at Elysium?’

  ‘That was all down to Bailey. He saw Kozek hustling Jackson and Rikki up to Jackson’s office, guessed what was happening and tried to warn you. The only reply he got was your text about Balfour and Ebenezer. He was mystified, Googled the two names and up popped the Wikipedia entry for Kidnapped.’ She raised a neat eyebrow. ‘Smart thinking, Joe. I was impressed. ‘However he had no real evidence, and given that Yuri was walking around with the Clairmont emeralds, Nina and her father were illegal immigrants working for a known criminal and Jackson . . . well . . .’ She stopped, flustered.

  ‘Wasn’t up for any citizen of the year awards?’ I suggested.

  She smiled and nodded. ‘For all those reasons Bailey was reluctant to contact the police. Instead he spent the next couple of hours going over every scrap of evidence the two of you had gathered and came to the conclusion that the Vulture either had to be me, or someone who had worked for me. As a form of insurance he emailed all the evidence to Keith Treadwell and as soon as Kozek’s people released Jackson, Bailey made him drive him down to Elysium to confront me about your abduction. When they got there they saw Kozek’s cars in the woods. So they slipped in through the back gate where Jackson armed himself with my garden spade. Then they crept up to the house, saw Viktor and a couple of thugs playing cards in the kitchen, with Raoul trussed up on the floor beside them, and managed to get a glimpse of what was happening to us in the sitting room. At that point Bailey insisted on calling 999. But things were moving fast and when Bogdan took a shot at you, Jackson ran to the rescue and knocked him out. The police arrived a few minutes later and while they dealt with Kozek and his mob you, Yuri and Nina were rushed to hospital.

  ‘What about . . . Jana Morozova?’ Just saying her name made me feel hot, and sick.

  ‘She survived. She’s in a specialist burns unit in London.’

  I threw back the bedclothes and swung my legs on to the floor. Pain cracked through my chest and the room lurched the other way. I reached out to steady myself. ‘I want to see her. I’ve got to make her tell me why she killed Mum.’

  ‘Shhh. Get back into bed. You don’t need to talk to Jana Morozova.’

  ‘You don’t understand . . .’

  ‘I can tell you why she ordered Sadie’s death.’

  ‘You?’ I looked round at her. ‘How do you know?’

  She hung her head. ‘This isn’t easy for me, Joe. I want you to promise to let me finish before you say anything at all.’

  ‘O . . . K . . .’ Mystified, I sank back on to the pillow. Norma seemed to be bracing herself to tell me something earth-shattering. A cold kind of dread crept through my body, numbing the pain in my chest. What if she was about to tell me that Mum had been leading a secret life? What if Mum and this mysterious Lizzie had been involved in some terrible crime?

  ‘When Greville disappeared I should have had faith in him and devoted my life to proving his innocence,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t. I went running off to a clinic in Switzerland, convinced I’d never recover from the heartbreak.’ She clutched the end of the bed so tightly I thought she was going to snap the bars. ‘But the thing was, Joe, I was pregnant.’

  I opened my mouth to tell her I didn’t want to hear about this right now. She raised her hand to stop me.

  ‘You promised to let me finish,’ she said. ‘I remember sitting there, staring at those cold white mountains, hating Greville for what he’d done and gripped by the terrible fear that I’d never be able to give his baby the love it deserved or shield it from the shadow of his crime. I made a terrible decision. One I’ll regret till the day I die. I decided to give my baby away. Not to strangers but to a couple I knew who were desperate for another child.’ She looked right at me. ‘That couple were Pam and Les Slattery. Sadie Slattery was my daughter. Her father was Greville Clairmont.’

  My knees shook softly and gently detached themselves from the rest of my body. Norma was spilling words out so fast that my stupefied brain could hardly keep up.

  ‘The only person I’d told about the pregnancy was Janice. The thought of her reporting my secret back to the KGB, keeping tabs on me, making sure I swallowed the lies about Greville makes me sick. Imagine how thrilled she must have been when I gave Sadie up.’ Norma was pale and trembling, and her face was covered in a thin layer of sweat. ‘I’m convinced that Ivo Lincoln discovered the details of Sadie’s birth and adoption in the KGB files. Then he tracked her down to tell her the truth about her identity and the murder at Elysium, probably so he could include her story in the expose he was writing. That’s why Jana Morozova had them both killed. So yes, when you turned on me in the garden and accused me of killing Sadie, in a way you were right. If I’d never given her up she’d still be alive.’

  It took me a while to find any voice at all and when I did, all that came out was a croaky whimper. ‘Not Lizzie. It wasn’t Lizzie.’

  Norma must have thought the shock had tipped my over the edge because she reached for the oxygen mask and started telling me to breathe.

  I shook her off. ‘When they cut Mum out of the wreckage they thought she was saying “Tell Joe and Lizzie.” But she wasn’t. Don’t you see? She was saying, “Tell Joe, Elysium.”’ She’d just found out the truth and she was desperate for me to know it, too.’

  The last piece of the puzzle had snapped into place, completing a picture that was so distorted it was like catching my crazy, mangled-up reflection in a fairground mirror and finding out it was the way I really looked. I wasn’t Joe Slattery. I was some weird version of him, stuck in a freaky, warped world I didn’t understand. Norma was still talking and I was glad, because when she finished, then what?

  ‘When my lawyer told me Sadie had died and you were living in Saxted, I felt an overwhelming need to see you and to tell you my secret. That’s why I came back to England and that’s why I arranged that ridiculous charade with the food deliveries. But when you walked into Elysium that first evening I saw Greville’s face in yours, the same eyes, the way you stood. And then, at the very end, when you smiled at me, just the way he used to … I couldn’t deal with it. I still believed he was a killer and all the old fears welled up. I kept asking myself, were you better off not knowing the truth about your grandfather? Had you inherited the twisted genes that made him a murderer?’ She gazed at me, her eyes pleading and full of tears. ‘And now that we know he was innocent, can you ever forgive me for abandoning Sadie?’

  A bit of me wanted to hate her for what she’d done to Mum, another bit could see she hated herself enough for the both of us, and the rest of me was still recovering from the shock of finding out her secret.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know . . .’ I said.

  Right then all I wanted to do was get away from her and her questions because I had a
couple of my own crying out to be answered, the main ones being, Who am I? and What’s going to happen to me now? The voices in my head were screaming What now? so loudly I almost missed Norma saying, ‘I want the truth to come out, Joe. I want the world to know you are my grandson and, if you agree, l’ll ask my lawyers to have you recognised as Lord Joel Clairmont, eighth Earl of Rutherford.’

  My mouth made shapes but there wasn’t any sound coming out.

  She squeezed her hands, nervously. ‘And I hope very much that you will come to live with me at Elysium.’

  The screaming in my head went silent because I guess she’d kind of answered my questions.

  I was still trying to get my head round the idea that this rich, famous woman was Mum’s real mum, when I realised that I was in a posh, private room, not a ward, and that Norma must be paying for it. There were comfy armchairs for visitors, a basket of fruit by the bed and a big vase of flowers on the windowsill. I stared at the flowers. They were white rosebuds.

  ‘Was it you who put that big white wreath on Mum’s grave?’ I said.

  She blinked in surprise. ’Yes. Yes, it was. I was horrified when it got vandalised.’

  ‘It wasn’t vandals that trashed it. It was me.’

  She pulled back. ‘Joe! Whatever possessed you?’

  ‘I thought the Vulture had sent them . . . gloating about killing her.’

  ‘Oh, Joe.’ Norma’s face contorted and she started doing this strange laughing-crying thing. ‘I’ve had enough of lies and misunderstandings. Let’s choose the next lot of flowers for Sadie together. And while we’re about it we’ll pick out a headstone.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Please, Joe,’ she said. ‘Let me at least do that for her.’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ A lump turned slowly in my stomach. ‘And I want to give Oz a proper send-off. Bury him somewhere in the garden at Elysium and put a marker on the grave or plant a tree or something.’

  She wiped her eyes and frowned. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

  ‘What’s the problem? Lots of people do it!’

  ‘The problem is, Joe, Oz isn’t dead. The vet said he might end up with a bit of a limp. But he should be fine for a good few years yet.’

  It was my turn to do that laughing-crying thing and for a while I couldn’t stop. I had answers, I had Oz, I had somewhere to live and maybe one day I’d find a way to forgive Norma for giving Mum away.

  CHAPTER 24

  It was Norma’s idea to throw a party at Elysium to celebrate my release from hospital. She thought it would bring us together and help me settle in. I wasn’t so sure about that but in the end I agreed, on condition it was nothing like the parties she used to throw in that house.

  For a start, her ‘Only the beautiful’ policy had to go. It would have kept half the guests I wanted to invite right off the list and I didn’t want a buffet or any poncey ice sculptures. I wanted a barbeque, with proper food, like ribs and steaks and burgers. Surprisingly she’d been well up for that but insisted on having gold-edged invites printed that said ‘The Dowager Lady Rutherford’ – that’s what she calls herself now — ‘and Lord Joel Clairmont’ – that’s me, weird huh? – ‘at Home.’

  I said to her, who’d be dumb enough to invite people round when they weren’t going to be home but she said that’s what you put on invites if you’re a lord. I didn’t get it. But there’s a whole bunch of stuff I don’t get, now I’ve acceded to the title. Acceded – I hear that word all the time these days, even use it sometimes, though I still have trouble believing it was me who did the acceding.

  Take it from me, there’s just no way of knowing how people are going to react when they find out you’re a lord. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t have just sprung it on them when they turned up at the hospital. Bailey laughed so much that Nina had to haul him outside because just looking at me kept setting him off. George, on the other hand, took it pretty calmly, maybe because Doreen started having some kind of fit, only unlike Bailey’s it wasn’t a laughing one.

  Still, I couldn’t have cared less what Doreen thought about anything and Bailey was welcome to take the mick as much as he wanted, seeing as he was the one who’d ‘saved my hide’ as he called it. Norma was right, though; his side of the story did get longer every time he told it (which was a lot) and when he got to the bit about my coded Kidnapped text you’d think he’d been the Einstein for doing a bit of Googling.

  Trouble was, getting the police involved had made things sticky for Yuri and even stickier for Nina’s dad. But Norma’s lawyer, Angus Pritchard, had got them out on bail and, seeing as they’d both been forced to commit their crimes and were key witnesses in the case that Scotland Yard was building against Viktor Kozek, Pritchard thought there was decent chance of them getting reduced or even suspended sentences. Unlike Viktor, Shrek, Bogdan and the rest of Kozek’s mob who’d all be going down for a very long time.

  Jana Morozova was still in a specialist burns unit but, believe it or not, she was getting off scot free. And as soon as they could move her they were sending her back to Russia. I know, it makes me puke. Some minister came round to see Norma, claiming that the government’s hands were tied because of Jana’s diplomatic immunity. But if you ask me she’d cut a deal – her freedom in exchange for keeping quiet about all the Brits in high places who’d spent the sixties and seventies helping out the KGB. Still, as Norma said, with injuries like Jana Morozova’s she wouldn’t be living much of life, and I can’t say I was sorry.

  Course, the minute it got out about Clairmont being a victim not a murderer and me being a lord, the papers went crazy and all these paparazzi camped out in the woods and hid in the trees, snapping photos of me and Norma on long-lens cameras. In the end Norma gave up on her bid for privacy and called a press conference. The reporters lapped it up, ’specially when she posed for their cameras and flashed them her million-dollar smile. I looked a right prat in the photos they took of us together but no one seemed to care.

  A couple of days later we had a private burial for Greville Clairmont in the Clairmont family crypt at Saxted church. It was the total opposite of the memorial service they held for him in London, which was all over the TV news with wall-to-wall barefaced liars crawling out of the woodwork, claiming they’d never doubted his innocence for a minute.

  As for the Clairmont emeralds, well, it turned out that Yuri had sold the earrings to Fat Marty (for a measly fifty quid) before getting out of Catford fast. Then Fat Marty had tried to get the stones recut and that’s when the rumours about the Clairmont emeralds had started flying round the black market. Anyway, I took Norma round to see Fat Marty and she managed to buy the earrings back ‘no questions asked’. But that slimy creep still charged her five hundred quid for the privilege.

  Elysium looked totally different with all the curtains open, the sunshine turning the glass front into a sparkling, sky-filled mirror and the lawns mowed to a stripy rolling velvet. In a red silk shirt, white trousers and that new short swishy hairdo she called a ‘bob’, Norma was barely recognisable as the weirdo woman in black I’d met all those weeks ago, and you could see she was just loving the chance to work her famous hostess magic again. It took her about two seconds to get Albert Brewster, the St Saviour’s porter, swapping stories with some of her celebrity mates from way back, Mum’s friend Shauna having a laugh with the vicar of Saxted, and Bitsy Lincoln chatting away to one of my Clairmont cousins, who was called Francesca. This Francesca had an uncanny look of Mum about her, ’specially when she laughed, and when I finally plucked up the nerve to go over and talk to her she turned out be musical, too. Only she played the violin in some orchestra and said she couldn’t sing a note.

  But even the new palm trees, huge yellow umbrellas and hoards of waiters running up and down, couldn’t stop the pool area looking more like a WWI field hospital than a swanky sun terrace. There was Yuri laid out on a sun lounger resting his busted arm and leg, Raoul with a dirty great bandage round his head, Prof L
incoln in a wheelchair with a walking stick at his side, me with my chest and arm strapped up and Oz with one of those lampshade things round his neck to stop him biting his stitches. Everyone was pretty cheerful though, ’specially Yuri who kept singing sentimental songs in Russian, downing Vodkas and toasting everything in sight. Raoul was still having trouble getting used to me and Oz moving in, though he got his revenge by calling me my ‘my lord’ really loudly whenever Bailey was around.

  Bailey was staying with us for a few days because Norma thought the country air would help his asthma. It seemed to be working. He was over by the gazebo looking healthier than I’d seen him for ages and chatting with his new best mate Keith Treadwell and some famous photographer from Norma’s modelling days, who’d flown in from LA.

  The pool was twinkly, turquoise and heated to the perfect temperature. Jackson was sitting on the edge, dangling Rikki in the shallow end while Danielle did lazy lengths in a white bikini and tried to ignore Oz, who was barking at her from the side.

  ‘Oz, be quiet. Here you go!’ I slid the sausage out of my hot dog and chucked it at him. He gulped it down and started barking again. Now that we were living at Elysium he’d come round to country life big time. Massive grounds to run around in, endless statues to pee against, a comfy bed in a warm kitchen with the option of the couches in the sitting room for general day-time lounging and flea scratching. Doggy heaven. I was the one who still couldn’t believe that we were here to stay.

  Jackson glanced up. I couldn’t see his eyes, just my own face reflected in his shades.

  ‘Hey, Joe.’ He flicked his head towards a nearby sun lounger.

  ‘Hey, Jackson.’ I sat down nervously. I’d seen him a couple of times since the night he saved my life but not to talk to on his own, and I had a horrible feeling he was about to have a go at me for ‘bringing those crazy Ukes down on all our heads’. I s’pose I couldn’t have blamed him if he had.